Cooperative Section has a duty of promoting, auditing and advising cooperative societies in line with governing rules, policies and regulations. It is a pool of economic activity which has a role of making sure that members/community needs and wants are satisfied and at the same time satisfying sellers/producers needs and wants. To make sure that trade section does the function of ensuring a fair play by applying laws, regulations, and policies. It provides market information to farmers groups. The section is also a source of revenue collection to the district council through Levy collected by cooperative societies after the sale of crops. Conduct financial education programmes and strengthen farmers Cooperatives to effectively manage resources for their members. And finally it has the role of building capacity of SACCOS and AMCOS on agricultural financing. Currently the district has a total of 186 cooperative societies as shown in table 2 below.
Table: 6 Cooperative societies
S/N
Item
Existing by 2013
AMCOS
69
SACCOS
58
PROCESSING COOPERATIVES
46
SERVICE COOPERATIVES
2
MINING COOPERATIVES(Salt)
2
JOINT ENTERPRISE
1
AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVES
8
TOTAL
186
Source: Mkuranga District Council, 2013
Although cooperative section has a significant role to play for the development of the district, it is constrained by various problems which hamper the smooth operation of the section these are: shortage of cooperative officers, motorbike, offices and little education on Book keeping and cooperative. Moreover there is illiteracy on entrepreneurial skills and ordinary education to cooperative leaders.
